What Clients Really Want

Key Point

Clients and professionals, by nature, tend to have different views as to what the service is. Professionals tend to emphasise the core specialist elements, clients value the softer "helpful" peripheral elements.

Successful professionals recognise this and adapt their style to suit. In particular they invest time and effort in ensuring that they have a good grasp of the clients world and perspective, and attempt to accommodate to that.

What Clients Really Want

Its all about perceptions and expectations. A survey was carried out of accountancy practices in three countries - UK, Sweden, and Canada. The researchers identified eight elements of service provided by such practices;

Technical Expertise

Taxation Advice

Statutory

Peace of mind/confidence

Problem Solving

Ideas Testing

Financial Advice

Prestige

Each practice and their clients were asked to score these for importance. The results can be seen by clicking on the picture below.

The key points were as follows:

In all cases the professionals providing the service rated the core technical elements as being the features that the client valued most (financial advice, technical expertise),

whereas the actual clients placed much more emphasis on the softer peripheral elements (peace of mind, confidence, statuary, tax advice).

Surveys of solicitors gave similar results, with clients rating approachability highest.